


You Remember

by Sylibane



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Memory Loss, One Shot, POV Second Person, Post-Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 12:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19464091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylibane/pseuds/Sylibane
Summary: You're starting to remember who you are, but your memories are still a mess as you sort through the past and present.





	You Remember

It’s night and you’re in your car. It’s raining, the drops pounding against the roof so loud that it drowns out your shouting. You’re cursing out everyone to blame for your current situation, from that loan shark to the police to your stupid know-it-all brother before you slump forward across the steering wheel, out of breath.

It’s morning and your back hurts and you don’t want to get out of your armchair where you fell asleep. Before you can make yourself move too much, the kids burst in with a plate of misshapen pancakes and reheated brown meat. Because of everything you’ve done for them, they made you breakfast. You still can’t quite remember what you did, but you’re not going to turn down food.

Your brother’s standing in the doorway of your den, watching as the kids jump on you and you gripe at them. He tells you to take it easy, that he can take the lead in rebuilding the house for today. It’s his house too, after all. You gripe at him too.

Even though the Shack’s closed, the handyman and the cashier have come in to help with the cleanup. You tell them they better not take advantage of the apocalypse to help themselves to the merchandise, and they just laugh at you. The kids have taped each other up with whatever band-aids they could find. Your brother is limping and has to keep sitting down, though he swears he’s fine when he sees you looking at him.

You can’t remember what happened to them. You’re not sure you want to remember what happened to them.

It’s winter and you’re hiding in the junkyard. Some of the snowballs the bullies from school had made had rocks in them. Your brother is bleeding and shaking and hiding his hands in his coat sleeves as you try to patch him up. You promise to knock their brains out for him. It doesn’t help much.

It’s summer and you’re at the bus stop to pick up your great-niece and nephew. It will be the first time you’ve seen them in years. The boy is starting to look like you did when you were his age but with more teeth. The girl smiles a lot, showing off her braces. You give them a tour of the museum for free, hoping to impress them. The girl loves it, the boy rolls his eyes at everything.

You’d love for them to just be another couple of brats passing through town, but these are the first family members in years who are willing to have anything to do with you. You can’t just push them aside. Not when the girl almost reminds you of yourself at her age.

Not when the boy almost reminds you of your brother.

It’s winter and your shoulder still burns with pain but you can’t bring yourself to move. Papers covered with research and blueprints and formulas you know you could never understand lie around you. The wind howls against the slats of the roof, and snow is starting to blow underneath the door. You don’t even know if there really are other people who live here, or if you’re completely alone. 

It’s summer and you’re badly sunburned from using your shirt as a sail for the remains of a ship. You’re sitting on the sand, your arm over your brother’s shoulder and his arm over yours, watching the Atlantic glow from the sun setting behind you.

You can’t remember your brother’s name.

You’re screaming your brother’s name.

Your niece runs up to you with her pig so that he can give you a pigly kiss, and you grouch at her. She chases around the kitchen with her pig before your brother and her brother intervene. Your brother wants some help with repairing the attic. It takes you a few tries to remember how to use the screwdriver, but he lets you take your time. He thanks you for passing him a hammer, and you don’t know why you hang onto his words so much.

Your nephew is handing you a weather-beaten book, dark red with a golden six-fingered hand glued to the cover. He says that weird things have been happening all summer and that this book is proof. You take it and laugh at his imagination. When the kids are asleep, you take it to the basement and prop it next to two journals with matching covers, the only difference being the numbers on the hands. For the first time in years your brother feels close.

You’re trying to convince your brother to play hooky with you.

You’re teaching the kids how to properly, carefully set off illegal fireworks on the roof.

You’re fleeing Pennsylvania.

You’re seeing your brother’s face staring back at you for the first time in years, except it’s not really his face, it’s just a statue. Your niece stands next to you, beaming, and you can’t say anything.

You’re weightless, lights swirling in every direction. The thing you’ve wanted most for thirty years is just across the room and you can’t reach it.

The fire’s everywhere.

You’re in a forest surrounded by people. They keep saying a name you’ve never heard before. the girl is bawling her eyes out, the boy’s voice is high and about to crack, and the man looks ready to collapse. You don’t know who any of them are or why they’re so upset.

You don’t know where you are.

You don’t know who you are.

You have to sit down and work to remember your real name, your fake names, your house, your job, your brother, your great-niece and nephew, where you were born, where you are now, where you’re banned from and why remembering everything again hurts so much. The kids are busy putting their room back together even if they’re only staying there for a couple more days. Your brother looks at you and the look in his eyes tells you he knows exactly what’s going on, and he hates it.

Your nephew runs downstairs asks for your help grabbing the wrench from the high shelf. Even as you get up and reach for it, you needle him about being short. You can’t stop yourself from teasing him. And yet he laughs. He used to hate those jokes. Maybe he’s just relieved you can remember them, because now you know you’ve told them before.

Just as your hand touches the wrench, your niece’s grappling hook tries to grab it from you, instead whacking you in the face. You yell at them for being a couple of hooligans who don’t respect the elderly as they run for the stairs.

Yes, now you’re starting to remember. You’re starting to remember _everything_. You remember a hundred fake names, a thousand lies, that your home, your face, even your name are just your brother’s, all ill-fitting and worn-out. You remember every injury, every heartbreak, every lie, everything you’ve lost, you’ve left behind, everything you _could_ have had if just one little thing had been different and yet still somehow not knowing if it all was out of love or just obligation, if it’ll just end in disaster again, if it was worth _anything_ —

Your niece hops onto your knee and opens her scrapbook across your lap. Look at this, she says, pointing at the photographs taped to the page. Do you remember when we had a party and then Dipper started the zombie apocalypse —

It wasn’t _that_ many zombies! Your nephew whines.

— And we all had to sing karaoke to defeat them! She turns the page. And this is when we found those dinosaurs and you punched a pterodactyl to save Waddles!

Your nephew joins her, flipping through the scrapbook. What about the road trip where we ran into the spider lady? That wasn’t that long ago, maybe you can remember that? Or that time you ran from mayor and had to save us from blowing up!

They both go on and on, talking about all sorts of crazy things, and they all feel familiar, but only like you’d heard someone describe them to you before, not that you were there, not that you were part of them, not that you were even sometimes the hero. You see your brother not too far from you, arms folded and smiling. Wish I could have been there, he says. It must have been incredible.

Course it was, you snap, even if you’re still not sure what they’re all talking about, but you can’t let go of that glee, that admiration, and even that little bit of jealous you hear in him.

You’re still not completely sure that you’re the man they think you are.

But you hope you can be.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-short I started not long after the series ended, but only got around to finishing now. Any comments, including constructive criticism, would be greatly appreciated.


End file.
